The specification relates to information search. In particular, the specification relates to rating a request for obtaining an account via a phone number and determining whether to provide information of the account to a user based on the rating.
Technology makes communications between people easy and fast. For example, people can chat over the phone or talk with each other over a social network. A person can exchange phone numbers with a friend, receive a call from an acquaintance, find a phone number of an insurance company from an insurance card, obtain a store phone number from an advertisement, etc. There are many ways for people to get phone numbers. However, locating an account of a person and connecting with this person using the account information of that person may not be as easy as getting a phone number. It would be desirable to find alternative solutions for discovering a person's phone number.
One issue that arises from allowing phone number mapping is a possible scenario where an unscrupulous user could try to use this functionality to create a mass mapping between phone numbers and users. For example, a user may try to obtain as many phone numbers as he or she can, and try to guess the owners of these numbers so that he or she can benefit from connecting with these owners (e.g., by advertising).